Hebron: Demolition Notices Served to School, 3 Structures

Israeli authorities delivered demolition notices to one school and three housing structures in the Masafer Yatta area, in the South Hebron Hills, in the occupied West Bank district of Hebron, on Monday.

Coordinator of a local settlement against the Israeli apartheid wall, Rateb al-Jbour, reported that Israeli forces stormed the Khillet al-Dabe school, which constructs of steel structures and forced the school’s staff and its 12 students to evacuate.

Al-Jbour added that Israeli forces then handed the school staff a demolition notice for the school.

Ma’an News Agency notes that the Palestinian Ministry of Education had just opened the school last month.

Israeli soldiers raided the Khirbet al-Mufaqara area as well, also in Masafer Yatta, and served demolition notices to three housing structures.

Israeli forces also delivered a demolition notice to the owner of a room adjacent to a cave, in the Khirbet Sarura area, where local and international anti-settlement activists were residing.

The South Hebron Hills, known locally as Masafer Yatta, lie almost entirely in Area C, the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli civil and security control since the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Around 3,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal Jewish-only settlements in the Yatta region, according to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ).

Masafer Yatta residents were expelled at the time of the establishment of a firing zone, in the 1970s, and were eventually allowed back, following a long court battle, but are now under the constant threat of being expelled or seeing their homes demolished.